Reminds me of the Crayola scratch pads with rainbow colors underneath. Also the project we used to do in art class as a grade schooler where you'd paint underneath and then put black wax/en-caustic and then scrape away. Makes me want to try it again!!

I can definitely see the Miro now that you mention it. The bookstore selling his 139 books makes a good comparison to Bruno Munari, and also says "Takei admitted that he felt an artistic kinship with Paul Klee once he became aware of and familiar with Klee's work."

They also write: "Early on Takei decided that the kampon would be his artistic playground and he explored every conceivable technique therein of image reproduction, inventing quite a number of new ones along the way. He used traditional methods of letterpress, woodblock, wood engraving, stencil, etching and lithography, as well as experimenting with printing from clay blocks and creating custom baren to rub and alter the impression obtained from blocks, along with definitely non-traditional images of woven labels, painted glass, ceramic, and cello-slides - transparencies composed of bright cellophane paper."

This book seems to have been printed offset, but I'm not sure how the original works were made. Another Takei book I have includes mini paper collages behind sheets of plastic -- an interesting object impossible to reproduce on the blog.

One more thing (why didn't I put all this in the post?): each image in Rainbow Print has a corresponding paragraph of text -- I think he's probably telling a short story.